Days of reckoning

This tight presidential election campaign has been marked by an obsession with numbers - specifically, the candidates' wildly fluctuating margins in the national polls. Martin Kettle, however, has his eye firmly on a more important figure

In an American presidential election there is one number that matters more than any other. That number is 270, the total of electoral college votes that either Al Gore or George W Bush must amass in order to capture the White House on November 7.

At a time when all who are involved in this tight presidential election campaign are obsessed with national polls showing one or the other man ahead - often by tiny margins - it is worthwhile to remember that the presidency is decided not by the popular vote but by the electoral college. In theory - and even, on three past occasions, in practice - the winner in the popular vote does not necessarily become president.

This hasn't happened for more than a century, but it is not an impossibility this November. Indeed this is precisely what the latest state-based polls are indicating. Bush may have a narrow lead in the national match-ups - this week's Pew poll put him ahead by the narrowest of margins, 45% to 44%, for example - but the accumulated picture from the states is different. Out there, it is Gore, not Bush, who is in the lead. And on election day, it's the states that each candidate wins that will determine the outcome.

A brief reminder of how the electoral college works. Each state has votes equal to its members in the US House of Representatives and in the US Senate combined. Since a state's representation in the House is based on its population, while each state has two senators, populous California has the most electoral college votes with 54, while seven small states and the District of Columbia each have just three. There are 538 members of the electoral college, and therefore 270 electoral college votes are required to win the presidency.

It has to be admitted that, at this stage, the composite picture from the states can only be put together by local polls taken on different dates and of differing levels of reliability. Nevertheless, the latest calculations suggest that Gore currently has 281 electoral college votes leaning his way, while Bush has only 249. One state, the normally Republican Arizona, is too close to call, but even if Arizona is added to the Bush total, it isn't enough to overtake Gore at present.

The electoral map after November 7 will inevitably look different to the map as it appears today. Nevertheless, a few features stand out. Gore's strength is concentrated wholly in the four westernmost states, the mid-west and the north-east. Bush controls almost everything else to the west of the Missouri river, plus the South and a significant salient in the mid-west. Bush country covers more acres than Gore country, which is concentrated in the most densely populated states.

If Gore wins on this basis in November, he will be the first presidential candidate not to carry his own state since George McGovern in 1972. But the similarity ends there for, whereas McGovern was obliterated, Gore would win the White House. The really striking thing about this match-up is that it would make Gore the first Democratic president in history to be elected without the support of a single Southern state.

Talking to a Gore aide the other day, we compared notes on the battle for the individual states. His list for a narrow Gore win was rather different from the line-ups just discussed. It didn't include Oregon, Nevada, Iowa, Missouri or Maine. It did, however, include Tennessee and West Virginia. Even that list gives a pretty amazing picture of Gore's America. The only Southern state in the Democratic camp was Tennessee. It foresaw Republican victories in Missouri and Florida, two states where Gore has strong hopes of winning.

But the most significant thing was the underlying and unspoken assumption. A Gore aide predicts his man will win by 274 to 264, losing some of the most important battleground states of the election. If that doesn't tell you that November 7 will be one of the closest elections in American history, then nothing will.